Tales from the Critic: What Goes Down Must Come Back Up

Even if I had not been tossing and turning, the wildlife would not have let me get much shut eye last night. After what seemed like an entire night in and of itself feeling the restless pain of betrayal by someone I thought cared about me but obviously doesn’t, I was awoken by the annoying sound of rustling and snorting outside my window. A family of javelina had decided to root around. I grumbled, sat up and released a sound that could only be described as half roar / half  growl. Most of the javelina scattered but one stood his or her ground, snorting louder and more aggressively than before.  Frustrated, my next sound was a whimper followed by crying. I must have sounded so pathetic that the javelina took pity on me and promptly retreated.

I continued to toss and turn until it was time to get out of bed. My workout was then interrupted by the sound of my chickens clucking in sheer panic. I paused “The Amazing Race” to look outside and discovered a coyote desperately trying to break into the chickens’ cage. I quickly grabbed my Sound Grenade (featured on Breakthrough Entertainment’s most recent Holiday Gift Guide) and pulled the trigger. The coyote looked at me and appeared to shake its head as if to say, “Silly human. That sound does not phase me in the least.” It, too, must have thought I was pretty pathetic as it slowly turned and walked away.

I finished my workout then bathed and, before long, I was on my way to the KPHX studio for Breakthrough Entertainment’s Easter Special. You can, of course, listen to the archived audio but if you did not tune into the live broadcast, you really should be ashamed of yourself. (You did say it was your favorite show and you wouldn’t ever miss it for the world, didn’t you? And wasn’t it you who begged to hear my voice if even for one final time?) Anyway, if you had watched our live in-studio video feed on Stream.Live/BreakRadioShow, you would have seen the Breakthrough Entertainment team’s Easter Eggs…


Eric’s is, of course, black while Tricia’s is every color of the rainbow, Kathleen’s is pink, Dave’s is red and mine is purple – a color I selected because I know it is significant to someone I care about even if they don’t truly care about me. After the broadcast, I stopped at Kohl’s. My mom and I had sat down for a few minutes in a pair of chairs near the front entrance but were quickly ejected from the seats when a man towered over us and said, quite sternly, “I am going to sit there.” I looked in the mirror but could not find the “Treat Me Like the Piece of Shit That I Am” sticker that is obviously slapped across my forehead so if someone could kindly point it out to me I would be forever grateful. The only silver lining is that my mom and I got to share a free one-scoop sundae from Culver’s…


From there, I made my way to a restaurant near my home for a party celebrating some family friends’ birthdays and anniversaries. I could not help but feel an emotional blow as I looked around the party and saw a past I never had, a present I still don’t have and a future that will forever be out of my reach. The only thing I could do was grab a glass (or three) of wine…


I saw my former classmate who is a father several times over, another former classmate who I at one time had an unrequited crush on and a former high school teacher of mine who I didn’t dare approach for I would be far too ashamed of not having done more with my life since she bestowed upon me an Outstanding Achievement in Language Arts Award. And for some reason, I kept hearing Ayo and Teo’s Rolex playing on a loop in my head as little angels wearing belly shirts laughed at me and called me a halfwit fool. I was in such a drunken  and depressed daze that I hardly even remember injesting two pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, cole slaw, potato salad and chips…


The rest of the story I would rather not go into too much detail about for it involves the age-old adage, “What goes down must come back up.” I’ll leave you with a selfie of someone who has seriously lost a few of his Easter Eggs over this past week. Let’s hope that he can find them soon… before they go permanently rotten…

Joseph J. Airdo

Joseph J. Airdo is a film critic, producer and on-air personality for Breakthrough Entertainment, a talk radio show airing 10-11 a.m. Saturdays on KPHX 1480 AM and BreakRadioShow.com that shines a spotlight on the practical perspectives of the topics and themes explored in movies. He has a pet duck named Frozen who is as opinionated about movies as he is. E-mail him at [email protected].

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